New blog is up: 1 Samuel chapter 30 (David Turns from his Sin & Is Victorious Again) verse 9-20.
Things discussed...
David wins back what was lost and more:
David pursues the Amalekites who conquered Ziklag.
Why did David's men begin to follow him again?
David must fight the Amalekites with less men.
Why does God want us to go through trials?
Why does God want to empty us before blessing us?
David models loving his neighbor by helping an Egyptian.
What type of situations should pity in us?
David routs and spoils the Amalekites.
What happens when we obey God?
Why does God want to fulfill his promises by including help?
Why should we give Jesus everything in our lives?
Why was David allowed to keep the spoils when Saul wasn't?
New Sermons:
1/18 - Lay Up Your Treasure in Heaven (Philippians 4:14-23) - Download
1. Paul's perspective on the gift from the Philippians.
2. Thanks for the past and present giving of the Philippians.
3. Paul declares a promise to the Philippians regarding their own financial needs.
4. A brief doxology.
5. Mutual greetings expressed.
6. Paul's final words.
1/18 - Marriage at the Resurrection (Luke 20:27-40) - Download
1. The religious leaders attempt to trap Jesus with a
strawman argument.
2. Jesus teaches the historical definition of marriage.
3. Jesus exposes their faulty logic and shows that Mormonism and Islam are both incorrect in their teachings about the afterlife.
1/18 - Luke Chapter 20 - Download
1. (1-2) The religious and political leaders question Jesus.
2. (3-8) Jesus answers their question with another question.
3. (9-16a) A parable about a landowner and his tenants.
4. (16b-19) Jesus applies the parable.
5. (20-22) The Pharisees try to entrap Jesus.
6. (23-26) Jesus answers their question.
7. (27-33) The Sadducees ask Jesus a ridiculous question.
8. (34-36) Jesus corrects their misunderstanding of resurrection life by showing it is life of an entirely different order.
9. (37-40) Jesus proves the resurrection from the Scriptures.
10. (41-44) Jesus asks a question: how can the Messiah be both the Son of David and the Lord of David?
11. (45-47) Jesus warns about the hypocrisy of the scribes.
A new Unbelievable? episode is up:
Does Humanism need God? Angus Ritchie vs Stephen Law
Saturday 17th January 2015 - 02:30 pm
The term 'Humanism' is often seen as synonymous with atheism. But a recent Theos report titled: 'The case for Christian Humanism: why Christians should be Humanists and Humanists should be Christians' claims to show that atheism is ill-equipped to support the fundamental tenets of Humanism.
Report author Angus Ritchie debates with atheist philosopher Stephen Law on whether atheistic humanism can account for the human dignity, morality and reason it espouses.
Discussed on the show is the Amsterdam Declaration 2002. What does this Declaration say?
The fundamentals of modern Humanism are as follows:
1. Humanism is ethical. It affirms the worth, dignity and autonomy of the individual and the right of every human being to the greatest possible freedom compatible with the rights of others. Humanists have a duty of care to all of humanity including future generations. Humanists believe that morality is an intrinsic part of human nature based on understanding and a concern for others, needing no external sanction.
2. Humanism is rational. It seeks to use science creatively, not destructively. Humanists believe that the solutions to the world’s problems lie in human thought and action rather than divine intervention. Humanism advocates the application of the methods of science and free inquiry to the problems of human welfare. But Humanists also believe that the application of science and technology must be tempered by human values. Science gives us the means but human values must propose the ends.
3. Humanism supports democracy and human rights. Humanism aims at the fullest possible development of every human being. It holds that democracy and human development are matters of right. The principles of democracy and human rights can be applied to many human relationships and are not restricted to methods of government.
4. Humanism insists that personal liberty must be combined with social responsibility. Humanism ventures to build a world on the idea of the free person responsible to society, and recognises our dependence on and responsibility for the natural world. Humanism is undogmatic, imposing no creed upon its adherents. It is thus committed to education free from indoctrination.
5. Humanism is a response to the widespread demand for an alternative to dogmatic religion. The world’s major religions claim to be based on revelations fixed for all time, and many seek to impose their world-views on all of humanity. Humanism recognises that reliable knowledge of the world and ourselves arises through a continuing process. of observation, evaluation and revision.
6. Humanism values artistic creativity and imagination and recognises the transforming power of art. Humanism affirms the importance of literature, music, and the visual and performing arts for personal development and fulfilment.
7. Humanism is a lifestance aiming at the maximum possible fulfilment through the cultivation of ethical and creative living and offers an ethical and rational means of addressing the challenges of our times. Humanism can be a way of life for everyone everywhere.
What is the Christian perspective on these points?
1. Humanism is ethical.
Humanism provides no metaethical foundation for it’s ethical system. Why is a metaethical foundation necessary? One is apt to ask why the human has worth, dignity and autonomy. To finally come to rest the foundations of a morality on the worth of a human is ad hoc. Especially after the humanist’s naturalistic view of evolution makes men into mere animals. Evolution is the great leveller. What’s so special about humans on naturalism? We’re just fortunate sacks of molecules in motion that have survived against the odds by tooth and claw.
On Christian theism humans are created by God in His image. This gives us inalienable rights, guarantees the right of personal freedom of choice, as well as deep significance and meaning to life. Moreover, God expresses our worth in His eyes when he showed his love by giving His only son as a sacrifice to pay our sin-debt and conquer death on our behalf. He spared not his only son for us.
You see how Christianity gives a substantiated reason for its assertions of worth and dignity, but how humanism cannot?
2. Humanism is rational.
This self-affirmation is astonishingly presumptuous. There is no argument here: only assertions and declarations of belief, more akin to blind faith than science and reason.
Still the Christian can agree that human thought and action are for solving the worlds problems and that the application of science and free inquiry should promote human welfare. We can agree to use science creatively and not destructively, but we’re not likely to condemn the scientist who researches dynamite to pull down an old building safely, or to minimise collateral damage during justified warfare.
On the Christian view God gave humans a mind to think and engage with the world as it is. On naturalism the mind is a physiological response to stimuli, socio-cultuarl pressures and evolutionary development. It is therefore tuned for survival and not for the apprehension of truth or rationality. It is hard to see why humanism is rational given naturalism.
There are few questions that must be asked, like who determines the ‘human values’ that temper the application of science and technology? Is it Hitler, Hefner, the Humanist or the Holy Spirit? Is it science itself, and if so doesn’t it work out that science proposes the means and the ends? If so, was Hitler rational at the time to propose and carry out his ‘Final Solution?’ After all, that was in accord by the evolutionary science being propounded in his day; was supposedly for the betterment of human welfare; and was then the human value system in vogue. At Nuremberg it was quickly realised to condemn these Nazi war criminals there needed to be a standard that stood above human and societal values, and the only values they could find to do that were rooted in God.
3. Humanism supports democracy and human rights.
Human rights are declared to be universal rights. That is they stand above all nation’s laws for all times and all places for all people. This statement is like eating white-froth if you consider the next fundamental’s (4) claim to be undogmatic and imposing no creed upon its adherents. Christianity however provides something substantive for the table. Universal human rights were developed by the founding fathers of America from their understanding of the scriptures. In Christopher Hitchen’s words Thomas Jefferson was a deist with atheistic tendencies. However, when it came to finding a ground for unalienable Rights, he pointed to the sky and said “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”2 The abolition of slavery was a practical out-working of this same understanding from scripture: that all men are created equal.) The Bible even gives justification for democracy also, but at the moment I’m not prepared to support that contention.) Both groups of people were smart enough to recognise that if human rights are given to a human by another human, they can be taken away again. If human rights are given by God, then no man can take them away. They become inalienable and truly universal.
Humanism lacks a model of what it means to be the fullest development of a human being. On Christianity it is clear the model is Jesus. On Humanism it can only be subjective and relative. What if the fullest possible development of the human being is Hitler? You might say that he did not support democracy, but then you’d be forgetting that Hitler was the legitimate democratically elected official of that nation. You might say that Hitler was wrong because the humanist ethic is based upon understanding and support for others, but then you’d be forgetting that Hitler deeply cared for Germany and to carry out his atrocious acts all that he needed to do was create a culture that dehumanised Jews, Blacks, Homosexuals, the handy-capped, etc.
How do you decry the wicked man who says he is only becoming ‘the fullest possible development of what it means to be human,’ if he has radically changed what it means to be human. Humanism lacks a definition of what it means to be human, but Christianity has a ready anthropological definition grounded in its own basic theology.
4. Humanism insists that personal liberty must be combined with social responsibility.
If a person is responsible to society, then what happens when society tells you to do something that is objectively wrong, like slaughter Jews wholesale (Nazi Germany), or force husbands to watch as their pregnant wives are split open by sabres so their unborn children fall to the ground to be crushed underfoot (Saddam Hussein’s Iraq), or taking unwanted new-borns and dashing them on rocks (ancient Greeks). The list of examples is appalling in its length and brutality, but it is already clear that responsibility to society is an insufficient ethic to build a world on. There needs to be some transcendent standard above society and humanity. Christianity provides that by revealing a morally perfect transcendent God as the standard.
“Humanism is undogmatic, imposing no creed upon its adherants.” This is self-referentially incoherant. It is dogmatic in being undogmatic. It is thus really rich when it concludes that humanism is committed to education free from indoctrination. Even if it is possible to educate people free from indoctrination from operating within a worldview, this statement is as double-handed as it gets. Humanists are experts at indoctrination. You need only look at our current education system here in NZ. An example follows in the next section.
5. Humanism is a response to the widespread demand for an alternative to dogmatic religion.
Humanism of course excludes itself from the dogmatic religious crowd, and seeks to fulfil the widespread demand for an alternative to dogmatic religion. It will do this by supplying people with another dogmatic religion (if not religion then ethical framework) and imposing it on others.
For example, take the belief that ‘morality is an intrinsic part of human nature.’ This means that humans are essentially and basically good. This is taught all throughout the education system and is one tenant of humanist indoctrination. Is it true? I leave it for you, but I think the Bible gives a far more realistic account to the state of the human heart; see Jeremiah 17:9 and Romans 3:9-19.
Christianity recognises that reliable knowledge of the world and ourselves arises also through revelation from God. If reliable knowledge arises from observation, evaluation and revision then its not really reliable is it?
6. Humanism values artistic creativity and imagination
On the surface this affirmation is fine. A deeper look at it though and you quickly realise how shallow it really is. What is creativity and imagination supposed to transform us into? What is it about literature, music and the other arts that provide us ‘human development and fulfillment.’ Humanism fails to answer the deep existential needs of human beings; ‘Why am I here?’ and ‘Where am I going?’
The purpose underlying most (if not all) creative expressions is communication. Art is a vehicle for a message. When you start to value the form, and not the message that lies behind the form, then art becomes mere mindless entertainment; a distraction to personal development rather than an aid. Is fulfilment reduced on humanism to amusement? Take from art its purpose and society will transform into a mindless mass that is far too easily manipulated.
Christianity affirms the value of art and artistic expression by imbuing the artist with purpose, answering the deep existential questions of life; by affirming the artist is created in the image of God and is therefore a creative agent; by supplying the artist with a message, inspiration and talent; and by infusing the world waiting to be captured and mirrored by great works of art, with a sense of the sublime. Naturalism on the other-hand finds beauty an awkward notion. It is difficult to see why an apes brain would appreciate the aesthetic pleasure from a morning sunrise, the star-filled sky and or the frozen waterfall.
7. Humanism is a lifestance aiming at the maximum possible fulfilment through the cultivation of ethical and creative living
If human existence transcends the death of the body, then obviously humanism is not for everyone everywhere. Humanism become bankrupt if this life is not all there is or if there is a God. Besides this, based upon the refutation of points 1 through 6 it is not obvious humanism does supply an ethical and rational means of addressing the challenges of our times.
It'd be nice to see more people in here and active. I check it every day and there's not much going on usually.